MAY 10, 2024 – Next to the Holland cottage was the Violet compound occupying the sweeping rounded corner where the west end of Rice Street and the south end of Levee Avenue blended together. As the maxim of real estate valuation goes, “location, location, location.” Though the lot was across the street from the Mississippi, Violets would have had a commanding view of the river: their house faced the beach, free of obstructions, and was perfectly sited atop a gentle rise from Rice and a short steep incline above Levee. I said “would have,” because I very much doubt that any of the Violets ever looked out their front windows to notice, let alone savor, the view.
The two-story house was as disheveled on the outside as it was on the inside—or at least on the few occasions I saw the inside. Behind the house things got even worse. The decrepit out-buildings housed the upholstery business run by Mr. Violet and his son Lawrence, always called “Larry.” A high-mileage pickup and an equally tired car or two always occupied the grounds between the house and the upholstery operation. The vehicles reminded me of mangy horses in a grungy farmyard.
The senior Violets themselves looked like used furniture in need of re-upholstering. They could often be seen in the yard behind the house, but neither of them mixed much with the rest of the neighbors. That wasn’t true of their grandson Dougie. Dougie would’ve been in my class at Franklin Elementary had he not been a “blue baby,” as my mother described him and my sister Elsa kept reminding me with reference to his severe disability. As Elsa put it, Dougie had a big hole in his heart, which explained why his lips were always blue and he was perpetually out of breath.
He was a simple kid and in and out of school but mostly out. When he was visiting his grandparents, which was often—he and his parents and sisters didn’t live far away—I’d try to play with him, mostly because he’d huff and puff his way down to our house and want to play with me, but he couldn’t exert himself very hard or for very long. Yet despite the big hole in his heart, Dougie had a big heart. He was invariably kind and cheerful, and when my sister told me that he would probably die young, I wondered if Dougie knew that. I wanted to believe he didn’t—and that my sister wasn’t right.
Dougie died four days before his 10th birthday. I felt sad when I heard of his death, but Mother reassured me that at least now Dougie’s heart was finally at peace. I went with that.
Since we didn’t interact much with Dougie’s parents or grandparents, I didn’t know much about them. No one else in the neighborhood seemed very familiar with them either. Based on my bicycle drive-by observations, the family seemed a bit rough around the edges, but after Dougie died, I thought there was probably a lot of sadness behind their take-it-on-the-chin appearances.
Larry—Dougie’s dad—seemed to hang out with others whom I thought were a little on the wild side. I remember one evening when Larry, his wife, and several of their friends pulled up at the end of the beach. They were in a party mood aboard Larry’s speedboat, which he’d launched at one of several nearby public landings. Since our side of the river was quite shallow, all the boat traffic ran along the channel on the Champlin side of the river. Rarely did a skipper ever venture close to the Rice Street public beach, which is why it was such a popular swimming area.[1]
I watched warily as the carousing adults alighted from the boat, which was powered by a big black classic Mercury outboard sporting lots of horsepower. Larry tied the bowline to the branches of a cottonwood hanging out over the water and followed his passengers up the embankment at the end of the beach. As I recall, Hollands had moved out of the cottage just before that time, and Larry’s family had moved in.
In any event, a few minutes after the happy boaters had disembarked, one of the friends returned—with a half-empty beer bottle in one hand. I watched him as he untied the bowline and repositioned the boat, bow pointing outward, in anticipation of the whole crew’s imminent reappearance and departure. No doubt they’d stopped to stock up on beer at the Violet’s cottage. The beer-bottle man then waded around the starboard side of the boat and began futzing with something on the transom, just to the right of the Mercury outboard. Suddenly, the powerful engine jumped to life, and like a mustang wrongly corralled, it took off dragging the beer-bottle man behind. He was hanging onto the boat desperately with his left hand and still clutching the beer bottle with his right hand, while his feet and legs were dragged through the water behind.
I’d never witnessed such a sudden, shocking mishap. I was sure the inexplicable and unintended take-off would not end well for man or boat or probably both. The man was perilously close to the engine shaft and spinning prop below the waterline, and I pictured his lower legs and feet turning into ground round at the same time I feared he’d let go and plant his face in the water—and into the churning blades. As helpless as I was horrified, I froze.
Somehow, whatever the guy had done to start the engine, he managed to undo before killing himself or sending downriver a high-speed runaway boat.
By this time the startled character had collected himself—and the boat—just as Larry came rushing down the bank well ahead of the others. The entire beach crowd stood motionless along the shore in befuddled awe over what had just transpired.
Larry nonchalantly climbed back on board, a beer in his hand as he took the wheel and motored slowly out across the river, joking and laughing with his friends as if nothing had happened.
Not long after the near catastrophe initiated by his friend, Larry proved himself a hero. The hot day had drawn a large crowd to the beach, and Larry was up in his yard tending to one thing or another. Suddenly, he heard a swimmer’s cry of distress. He immediately dropped whatever was at hand and sprinted across the street. From the sandbur patch at the edge of the sloping beach he caught sight of the young woman yelling for help and dashed down to the water, shedding on the way what clothes he could. In sight of the helpless onlookers, he splashed out into the river, dove in and swam like an Olympian to the girl just as she was about to go under. He helped her ashore and without further fanfare, gathered up his clothes and repaired to the cottage across the street.
After that heroic act, I had a completely different impression of Larry. Having saved a human life by such extraordinary alertness and quick-thinking while everyone else stood by helpless, Larry Violet had earned the right to be as rough around the edges as he liked.
Many years later, what remained of the Violet encampment and Holland’s former cottage, were razed without a trace. In their stead stands a large imitation Victorian mansion with upper floor windows affording a truly commanding view of the Mississippi as it flows inexorably past the old Rice Street beach.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] When we first moved to town, the beach had changing shacks and a pier. When I turned three—August 1957—the municipal swimming pool, a gift of Charles Horn (Bob Ehlen’s mentor and predecessor as Chairman of the Board of Federal Cartridge – see 5/4/24 post), opened on the other side of town. Thenceforth, the beach was no longer maintained by the city as an official swim park, but it continued to draw lots of people from all over town, especially on the hottest days of the summer.
